ACT Scores Up, But ACT Says Few High School Students Are Ready For College

Indiana's high school students scored higher on the ACT this year than last year, and the state's students are above the national ACT average. But the makers of the exam say fewer than one-third of high school graduates who took the exam might be ready for all of their college courses.

The new report from ACT says the composite average for Indiana students was 21.9 out of a maximum score of 36. That's up from 21.7 in 2013 and above the national average of 21. But possibly skewing the result in Indiana's favor is the number of students taking the college entrance exam, or lack thereof. ACT says only about 40-percent of Indiana's high school graduates took the exam, and while that is up from previous years, it is still below the number of students taking the rival SAT. Nationally, about 57-percent of high school graduates took the ACT this year.

Indiana's average on the ACT recovered somewhat from a drop last year - the composite average was 22.3 for three consecutive years between 2010 and 2012. Also, only 32-percent of Indiana's high schoolers meet what ACT considers to be benchmarks for college readiness in all four subjects covered by the exam - math, English, reading and science, though that is above the national average of 26-percent. The ACT benchmarks mean that students have a 75-percent chance of earning a C or higher in a first-year course in college.